First Historical Transformations of Christianity.
From the French of Athanase Coquerel the Younger,
by E. P. Evans, Ph.D. 12mo. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1867.
This is a very weak and flippant production from the pen of a French rationalistic Protestant, who imagines that he is a philosopher of history. He pretends to show us various forms which pure Christianity has been made to assume by the different apostles, doctors, or sects who in turn took upon themselves to be its expositors. Of course, as Monsieur Coquerel the Younger would think, they each and all made bad work of it, from St. Peter down to the last publishing medium of spiritism. It is truly deplorable that the pure Christianity which Monsieur Coquerel the Younger now sees in all its simplicity should have had the misfortune to be thus Judaized, Hellenized, Paulized, Peterized, Joannized, Romanized, and diversely ized by the Fathers of the church and heretics; and may we not also add, Protestantized and Coquerelized?
Let us see what is the Christianity of Jesus according to Monsieur Coquerel's gospel: "In short, the whole instruction of Jesus can be included in the following formula: the work to be accomplished is the reign of God in all consciences; the universal motive through which this reign is to be established, the essential fact of this reign, is love, of which the twofold manifestation is pardon and new or eternal life; and these two manifestations presuppose two facts, whose certainty has no need of proof— sin and immortality. Thus reducing all Christianity to a single formula, it may be said that Jesus revealed to all sinners the eternal compassion of the God of holiness, their Father." (P. 65.) This cant about pardon and the new life in the mouth of one who rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ, who is unwilling to impose the belief in his miracles upon any sincere Christian, (sic,) and who thinks the doctrine of hell is rank nonsense, would need explanation, did we not gather from a previous sentence that Monsieur Coquerel the Younger is as shallow a theologian as he is a philosopher. Speaking of our Lord, he says: "He has such an absolute certainty of the power of God, and of the efficacy of the good and the true; such a full confidence in the perfectibility of guilty man; such a high esteem for human nature, wholly sinful as it is, that, in his eyes, the elevation, the healing, the salvation, the enfranchisement of every soul that is willing to return to God and love him are not an object of the slightest doubt." (P. 64.) Beside this we place one other quotation, which we think will suffice: "Liberal Protestants are constantly asked where they would fix the boundary which separates Christians from those who are not Christians. Each man has the right to solve this formidable problem in the light of his own conscience!" (P. 75.) And this man pretends to lecture the world for transforming Christianity to suit its own notions! We would advise Monsieur Coquerel the Younger to review his logic.
Critical And Social Essays,
reprinted from the New York Nation.
12mo, pp. 230. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.
It is a good deal to say of a newspaper nowadays that it is possible to collect from its columns in the course of two years a whole volume of essays passably well worth preserving. And many of the essays in this neat little book are much better than passable. Of course one does not look for deep philosophy or strikingly original thought in the ephemeral papers dashed off for a week's entertainment, and sent flying over the country on the wings of the periodical press. It is enough if the subject be attractive, the argument mainly just, the style fluent, and now and then striking. The essays from The Nation generally fulfil these conditions, and afford very agreeable recreation for odd intervals of leisure. The cold and almost cynical spirit of criticism, and the utter lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, which have done so much to deprive The Nation of that influence in public affairs to which its literary merit entitles it, appear in a more favorable light in the pages of a book than in the columns of a periodical. Book-readers have time to appreciate graces of style, and to roll sweet morsels of thought and phrase under their tongues; but the journalist in America must deal with a different public, and must serve them with coarser materials. His weapon must be not the scalpel or the lancet, but the axe and the bludgeon.
Fathers And Sons. A Novel.
By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgenef.
Translated from the Russian, with the approval of the author, by Eugene Schuyler, Ph. D. 12mo, pp. 248. New-York: Leypoldt & Holt.
The object of this novel is to contrast the generation which is just passing away in Russia with the generation that is taking its place—the old lords of the soil, still half-bewildered by the inroads of civilization upon their semi-savage life, and the young party of progress, intoxicated with the new ideas of emancipation, the new learning, the new habits, and the new morality which is fast breaking up the old Tartar feudalism. We can well believe the translator's assertion that a tempest was raised by the appearance of the book in Russia. The portraits are flattering to neither generation, and they are so life-like that it is impossible to doubt they are substantially accurate representations of both. As a work of fiction, Fathers and Sons is particularly interesting to us. Artistically speaking, it is a very good novel indeed, and it is moreover almost the first glimpse we have had of the fictitious literature of a country toward which Americans are, whether rightly or wrongly, especially attracted. It gives us a better view of daily life in Russia than any book of travel or observation with which we are acquainted—better not only because clearer, but also because it is of necessity perfectly undistorted. But the picture is painful enough. For most of the characters in the story the author evidently has no love; but even the best of them are singularly unamiable. And we close the volume with the reflection that, if there is no better life in Russia than the life he paints; if the men and women whom he brings before us are fair types of the average culture and virtue of the empire; if the fathers have no intelligence, and the sons neither human affection nor religion, the future of Russia must be far different from what modern writers are fond of predicting. The morality of the story is bad, but its badness is so transparent that it can hurt nobody. There is an offensive tinge of sensualism in it, too, and this is less apparent, and therefore more dangerous.
Barbarossa: A Historical Novel of the Seventh Century.
By Conrad Von Bolanden.
1 vol. 12mo, pp. 486. Philadelphia: Eugene Cuminiskey. 1867.
The historical novel is a difficult one to write. To strictly follow the bare facts of history will make the work dull to most readers of light literature; and to allow the imagination full play in working out its scenes and representing them as if they had been actual occurrences will offend the student of history. The middle ages, however, are full of matter for the historical novelist. We have too few gleaners in this prolific field. We can remember only one attempt of the kind in the English language within the last decade of years. William Bernard McCabe, in his "Bertha," has done good service toward making known, in a popular manner, the designs of the Emperor Frederick to become universal emperor, or Pontifex Maximus, as he hoped to be one day called.